*A. I. Shingarev was a prominent Kadet and expert on agrarian problems. He served as Minister of Finance in the Provisional Government and was murdered in early 1918 by pro-Bolshevik sailors.
*Because they were suspected of German sympathies, numerous Jews living near the combat zone—estimates run as high as 250,000—were forced in 1915 to move into the interior of the country.
*E. D. Chermenskii, IV Gosudarstvennaia Duma i sverzhenie tsarizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1976), 204–6; Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 241. On the unpopularity of Stürmer due to his German name: IA, No. 1 (1960), 207. If not for that they would have targeted Protopopov, making an issue of his talks with a German representative in Stockholm.
*According to the French Ambassador, this was done at Stunner’s request: Maurice Paléo-logue, La Russie des Tsars pendant la Grande Guerre, III (Paris, 1922), 86–87.
*Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 251. The most vociferous of the hecklers, Kerensky and Chkheidze among them, were suspended by Rodzianko for fifteen days.
*Archive of S. E. Kryzhanovskii, Box 5, File “Rasputin,” Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, New York, N. Y. Vyrubova dismisses gossip of his alleged sexual excesses, saying that he was entirely unlovable and that she knew of no woman who had had an affair with him: Anna Viroubova, Souvenirs de ma vie (Paris, 1927), 115.
*There exist two eyewitness accounts of Rasputin’s murder. Purishkevich wrote down his recollections in diary form two days after the event, which he published in southern Russia in 1918; this version was reprinted in Moscow in 1923 as Ubiistvo Rasputina. Iusupov’s memoirs, Konets Rasputina, came out in Paris four years later. Of secondary accounts, the most informative is that by A. S. Spiridovich (Raspoutine, Paris, 1935): the author, a general in the Corps of Gendarmes, was Commandant of the Guard at the Imperial residence in Tsarskoe Selo.
*According to Miliukov and Maklakov, however, tales of popular rejoicing at Rasputin’s death are “an aristocratic legend”; in reality, ordinary people were troubled by the murder: Spiridovich, Raspoutine, 413–15.
†The absence of poison in Rasputin’s remains must mean that, in fact, it had not been inserted into the wine and pastries. The records of the judiciary inquiry into the Rasputin murder were offered for sale in Germany sometime in the interwar period by the firm of Karl W. Hiersemann (Originalakten zum Mord an Rasputin, Leipzig, n.d., Library of Congress, DK 254.R3H5), but their present whereabouts are unknown. The advertisement (pp. 8–9) confirms that the autopsy revealed no traces of poison.
*“The assassins of Rasputin were never tried, apparently owing to the intercession of the Dowager Empress. After spending some time with the Russian forces in Persia, Dmitrii went to England, where he led a carefree life among the British aristocracy. He later married an American heiress. His diaries, deposited at the Houghton Library, Harvard, show no concern for his native country. Iusupov, who was exiled to one of his estates, eventually made his way to the West. Purishkevich was arrested by the Bolsheviks and then released. He later joined the White armies and died in France in 1920.
*G. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, II (Boston, 1923), 45–46; cf. A. I. Spiridovich, Velikaia voina ifevra’skaia revoliutsiia, 1914–1917 gg., III (New York, 1962), 14. Buchanan, however, is not an entirely reliable witness. According to his Buchanan’s daughter, Nicholas further said that rumors of impending unrest were exaggerated and that the army would save him: Meriel Buchanan, Petrograd, the City of Trouble (London, 1918), 81. Nicholas received from the police information that the British Embassy was in contact with anti-government groups in the Duma and even providing them with financial assistance: V. N. Voeikov, S tsarem i bez tsaria (Helsingfors, 1936), 175.
8
The February Revolution
Following two mild winters, the winter of 1916–17 turned unseasonably cold: in Petrograd, the temperature in the first three months of 1917 averaged 12.1 degrees below zero centigrade (10 Fahrenheit) compared with 4.4 (40 F) degrees above zero the same time the previous year. In February 1917 it dropped to an average of minus 14.5 degrees (6 F). In Moscow it sank even lower, to 16.7 below zero (2 F).1 The cold grew so severe that peasant women refused to cart food to towns. Blizzards piled mountains of snow on the railway tracks, where they lay untouched for lack of hands to clear them. Locomotives would not move in the freezing weather and sometimes had to stand in place for hours to build up steam. These climatic conditions aggravated further the serious transport difficulties. In the thirty months of war, the rolling stock had declined from wear and inadequate maintenance. By mid-February 1917, Russia had in operation only three-quarters of its peacetime railway equipment, and much of it stood immobilized by the weather: during the winter of 1916–17, 60,000 railroad cars loaded with food, fodder, and fuel could not move because of the snow—they represented about one-eighth of all the freight cars available.2
The breakdown of supply had a devastating effect on the food and fuel situation in the northern cities, especially Petrograd. The capital seems to have had sufficient stocks of flour: according to General S. S. Khabalov, the city’s military commander, on February 25 the warehouses held 9,000 tons of flour, more than enough for several days.3 But fuel shortages had idled many bakeries. Around February 20, rumors spread that the government was about to introduce bread rationing and limit purchases to one pound per adult. In the panic buying that ensued, the bakery shelves were stripped bare.4 Long queues formed: some people braved the freezing weather all night to be first when the bakeries opened. The crowds were irritable and scuffles were not uncommon. Even police agents complained that they could not feed their families.5 Fuel shortages also forced factories to close: the Putilov Works shut down on February 21. Tens of thousands of laid-off workers milled on the streets.
Nothing better illustrates the extent to which the government had lost touch with reality than the Tsar’s decision, at this tense and difficult moment, to leave for Mogilev. He intended to stay there one week consulting with Alekseev, who had just returned from a period of convalescence in the Crimea. Protopopov raised no objections. On the evening of February 21, he assured the Tsar he had nothing to worry about and could leave confident that the rear was in good hands.6 Nicholas left the following afternoon. He would return two weeks later as “Nicholas Romanov,” a private citizen under house arrest. The security of the capital city was entrusted to very unqualified personneclass="underline" the Minister of War, General M. A. Beliaev, who had made his entire career in the military bureaucracy and was known to his colleagues as “dead head” (mertvaia golova); and the city’s military commander, General Khabalov, who had spent his professional life in chanceries and military academies.
30. International Women’s Day in Petrograd, February 23, 1917. The sign reads: “If woman is a slave there will be no freedom. Long live equal rights for women.”
Suddenly, the temperature in Petrograd rose to 8 degrees centigrade (46 F), where it would remain until the end of the month.7 People whom the freezing weather had for months kept at home streamed outdoors to bask in the sun. Photographs of the February Revolution show gay crowds under a brilliant sky. The climatic accident played no small role in the historic events of the time.